One Light, One Heavy: EEC 3212 and CAGY 19123

[ednadolski]

The sun came out today for the first time in a couple of weeks, which is the opposite of typical for the Denver area.   Anyways this was an opportunity for me to grab a couple of quick pics of these N scale boxcars.  The EEC is an Exactrail and the CAGY is an FVM.  These both have some added details, including the LEZ couplers in the brass pockets (with air hoses) along with some handmade wire parts.  With the EEC I was trying to be subtle but some of that tends to wash out a bit in the strong daylight pics.  It has an airbrushed fade, plus some light washes along with targeted powder applications.  The CAGY turned out to be basically a fantasy car since I could not find many good proto pics with the level of weathering that I had in mind.  I was hoping to make it look fairly crusty but also avoid overdoing it since this was basically a white scheme.  In closeup pics like this I think the rust texture tends to look a bit over-scale, tho I find it less so in-person.  Tags on both cars are hand-painted with oils.




























Cheers!
Ed

[Missaberoad]

The CAGY car is sick! I could stare at it all day...

...but I love the EEC car, anonymous working class hero... A long cut of those would scream modern railroading to me...

[Bendtracker1]

Nicely done sir!
I love the roof of the CAGY!

[peteski]

There you go again taking photos of real RR cars, then trying to pass them off as N scale. Yeah, right.   

[amato1969]

Really nice work!

  Frank

[Santa Fe Guy]

Both cars look way cool Ed.
Its been a cold autumn here which means no weathering and for the next few months also as we head into winter, bugger.
Show me more!

[coosvalley]

Very nice Ed! 
+10 internets....

[Ed Kapuscinski]

As usual, beautiful work Ed.

[glakedylan]

top notch work here, Ed...really super
very appreciated
thanks for sharing
sincerely--
Gary

[GaryHinshaw]

Very nice Ed.  The EEC definitely benefits from a good fade:

http://www.railcarphotos.com/pix/54/EEC%203207_Shenandoah%20Junction%20WV_Tom%20Zarnock_2009-07-09_54439.jpg

and the rust work on the CAGY is excellent - it doesn't look too course to my eyes at all.  But no wire grabs on the EEC?   

-gfh

[peteski]

But no wire grabs on the EEC?   

-gfh

You know, I was going to mention this in my post.  I was thinking of saying that it didn't bother me at all. What would have bothered me would be if there were oversize separate plastic grabs installed at the factory.  Of course some delicate in-scale wire ones would be good, but I still think it looks good as-is.

[GaryHinshaw]

It doesn't bother me at all either.  But the fine wire grabs on the CAGY car look great, so I was just badgering Ed a bit.

[ednadolski]

Mucho thanks RW dudes, for checking these out and for your comments.

Say Gary you found the proto pic that I cribbed from .   The ER car is a pretty good model tho I did not feel it was close enough to make a genuine proto effort from it.   On the grabs, yep even tho I am a real big fan of wire parts, and the drop-type grabs would clearly have been more accurate for this model,  I also wanted to see how it would end up looking with the molded grabs.  Another motivation was to stick with the factory paint, but shaving off the grabs would have needed a full re-paint since there is not enough weathering on this model to hide a touch-up job.  The CAGY was a different story, since white is much easier to match, and there is a bunch of rust to disguise the imperfections.

Replacing the stirrups is something that I prefer to do on most N-scale cars, since the factory plastic ones are often substantially oversized, and the wire parts are usually not too hard to make and match.   Note too that the EEC lacks cut levers, I am finding that in a moving train I tend not to notice their absence.

One other thing I still want to figure out is how to make those outward facing dents, like so many older cars have.  Might be possible to simulate with some paint; it should make for a pretty distinctive feature. 

Cheers,
Ed

[peteski]

One other thing I still want to figure out is how to make those outward facing dents, like so many older cars have.  Might be possible to simulate with some paint; it should make for a pretty distinctive feature. 

How about using an adjustable temperature soldering iron set at a temperature which will allow you to soften the plastic without melting through. Then just make the dents like they would occur in a real car - from the inside.

[ednadolski]

How about using an adjustable temperature soldering iron set at a temperature which will allow you to soften the plastic without melting through. Then just make the dents like they would occur in a real car - from the inside.

Some folks have tried, but I cannot recall seeing any specific efforts that were particularly convincing, esp. in N scale.  Softening the plastic seem like a rather risky game at least to me.  The dents would really only need to be a few thou off from flat to be effective, but the trick would be to emulate the actual shape, in scale, without looking bulbous or blob-ish.

If a full paint job is an option, then perhaps one approach would be to apply some very thin (.001" -.002", i.e. foil-like) brass or PB metal between the ribs, tho the fit would have to be very precise.   Just trying to apply it flat would inevitably come out with a bit of waviness.

Ed